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Being a New York City resident for the past three years now, I think I have gathered enough information to determine that the MTA is a main source of most of my anxiety. I’m sure this is the same for most other New Yorkers as well. This is the reason why I am moving close to my job once my lease is up so I will never have to take the MTA on a daily basis again. It’s come to the point where I would pay extra money for my rent then pay less and take the MTA every day. Here are a few of the many, many examples of why the MTA is a huge anxiety to me.

1. I just have to say that this is what started me on ranting about the MTA. The MTA FORGOT about passengers stranded on an A train in last year’s blizzard. Recently, the President of New York City Transit was quoted in saying, “We forgot about that train.” They forgot about a train filled with passengers in a blizzard…yeah, no, I totally trust the MTA. Because of this incident, if passengers have been stranded for an hour or two, the MTA is attempting to appoint advocates that will act on the stranded passengers behalf and find ways to rescue them. I love how they are just doing this now. You non-New Yorker’s don’t understand what can happen to people who are stuck on a subway for even an hour or two let alone SEVEN HOURS which is what happened to those poor people last winter. Just to clarify the situation of being stuck on a NYC subway, here’s a few tweets that were sent out from a passenger that was in the stuck subway last winter. “Son!!! I wanna go home!!! Dudes on the train talking about cannibalism lol I want out!!!” And then: “6 o clock we gonna be live on abc news… But that don’t mean nothing!!! I’m hungry.” But amidst the despair, a note of triumph: “I’m lucky I’m a dude. I’ll just whip it out n pee out the last car. Lol.” (@OMJohnnyG) Some of the 500 riders stuck in the train overnight in Queens during the blizzard were forced to urinate between cars and huddle together to keep warm during the 7-hour ordeal. One passenger even vomited. Yeah, I definitely shouldn’t worry about being stuck on a subway car for a long period of time, it seems pretty comfortable.

2. “The MTA’s new executive director, discussed the organization’s nearly $10 billion budget gap at his first board meeting Wednesday and spoke out on necessary fare hikes.” Fare hike? Awesome! When I started college and moved to the city, the fare had just gone up for subways and it was at $89 for an unlimited monthly subway pass or $2.00 per ride. Since then, there has been a fare hike that brought the cost to $104 for an unlimited monthly subway pass or $2.25 per ride. Now they are saying they will raise fare by 2013? No, I’m done with paying for the MTA to screw me over on a daily basis. I am moving to where I work and paying a little more to do so just so I don’t have to spend ridiculous amounts of money on services that only work half the time. Soon it’ll get to a point where people won’t even be able to afford public transportation anyway. I mean I’m getting to that point soon.

3. On a personal note, they combined two buses near my apartment into one. I used to have no issues going to work in the morning because it would always come pick me up and drop me off at the subway stop to continue with my commute. However, now that they combined two buses, they are usually so packed with people that they can’t pick up anyone from the last 4 or 5 stops on the route. Thus, I have to walk (not a short distance) to the subway every morning. In the rain, cold, heat, everything. Even better is when I get to the subway, there are usually delays which make the stop super packed with people to where I can’t even get on the first few trains that do come by. Either a plague needs to break out that will take down our population count or MTA needs to figure out how to make people’s commutes A LOT better.

4. Their Twitter and Website are just lists of what’s going wrong with which lines. I get notifications on my phone if there is an issue with either of the 2 trains or 1 bus that I can take to and from work, and it goes off EVERY SINGLE DAY. There hasn’t been one day where I haven’t gotten a notification. And those are just the lines I use, I’m not even including all of the NYC lines combined. I know it’s hard to run a big operation like MTA, I know that. But I feel like the subways and buses I use are always having problems!!

This is exactly why I’m moving back to Manhattan within walking distance from work. This way I can wake up and say to myself, hey! I know that it will take me exactly 10 minutes to walk to work today! I should leave early and grab something nice for breakfast! Not thinking, great I get to wake up an hour earlier to get to work even though the trip says its only supposed to take 20 minutes. Oh? I get to be late because the bus will pass by me and the subways will be delayed? OH? I’m going to be packed to close to strangers in a hot box that’s moving super slow under the streets of New York? OH? SORRY FOR THE INCONVIENCE SUBWAY MACHINE RECORDING?? I think every time I make an MTA transit commute I lose 1 day of my life due to stress.